where young students were videotaped singing the praises of President Obama is making no apologies for the videotape and says she would allow the performance again if she could, according to [three] parents who spoke with her Thursday night....
Parent Jim Angelillo said [Principal Denise] King told him the lesson was merely part of Black History month, and not an attempt to indoctrinate students, as critics have charged....
King has long been a fan of Obama, hanging pictures of the president in her school's hallways and touting her trip to his inauguration in the school yearbook.
Included in the full-page yearbook spread were Obama campaign slogans ("Yes we can! Yes we did!") and photos King took in Washington on Jan. 20, when she attended the inauguration.
There also were photos taken at the school depicting students doing Obama-themed activities about their "hopes for the future," featuring posters of Obama....
Attempts to reach King on Friday were unsuccessful....
I should stress that one should always be cautious about second-hand accounts of oral conversations; it may be that the parents misunderstood the principal, or that important context was omitted. That's why I hope that the principal, who is after all a public servant, does indeed publicly explain her position herself.
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In the meantime, this is only the tip of the iceberg. I have seen Obama's picture on the walls in federal offices such as the United States Trustee and the local DOJ/USA's office here in Los Angeles.
This has never happened before! Right?
It's your blog, no question, and you can blog about whatever you wish. I'm just raising the possibility that you might be getting a bit too worked up about what is a pretty minor story.
One would think EV, who is after all a public servant, would have something better to do with his time.
Why are you so disturbed by the criticism that readers don't find this series of posts interesting? Isn't the point of the comment section to discuss the topic, a notion that, assumedly, encompasses discussing whether the topic itself is relevant, interesting, etc.?
SOP.
Idiots make death threats. They never actually do anything.
Other idiots say they receive death threats to take some of the heat off the stupid thing they did.
I've no doubt the blogger is blogging about what he wants to blog about, but is that blogger really Eugene?
The vast majority of topics are uninteresting to the vast majority of people. If you find something uninteresting, whether it's a blog post or a topic of conversation, it's better to politely move along than to say you find the topic uninteresting.
It's "better" for whom?
It seems better for me to express my opinion - as a consumer of what this blog offers - and hope that, in the future, I get more of what I like and less of what I don't.
You would have me stop at clicking or not clicking. Why is that "better"?
You may have a point there. I can't help, though, finding it interesting that Eugene found this topic this interesting.
And I'm sure the United States Trustee's office and the local DOJ/USA's office call meetings for the employees to gather and sing songs about the greatness of the incumbent president. I mean, how could anyone object to that? Happened all the time under Bush, I understand, and no one objected then, did they?
Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing more posts like this!
Can't we get off this fixation with EV's choice of posts and talk about
thisthe issue at hand - why would a principal think it's OK to worship BHO and, what's more, think it'sOKfine to do so after so many parents in the school have objected to the whole exercise?From the face of it she appears to be a petty tyrant who thinks that the children are her personal possessions when
theirthey're at school and parents should just shut up because she knows more than they about what's best for their kids.First, why do you think your opinion matters on this particular aspect of the blog? Second, what do you suppose this blog would look like if -- as you, David Welker, Angus, martinned have done -- all of the thousands of visitors posted two or three comments in every entry expressing their opinion as to whether that particular entry was worthy of being blogged about?
I personally think this is an important topic, but before I saw the numerous posts criticizing EV's decision to blog about it I didn't feel a need to cast my vote on the subject.
Regardless of whether those kids grow up to want to hump Obama's leg or deny his very existence, it's important that they reach that conclusion because they learned to evaluate the world on their own. This country needs citizens who are capable of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions. That is what our schools should be giving us, not a bunch of indoctrinated drones parroting back whatever "the government" tells them is good.
And I'm sure the United States Trustee's office and the local DOJ/USA's office call meetings for the employees to gather and sing songs about the greatness of the incumbent president."
I'm sure that you can find Monica Goodling's House testimony archived somewhere on the web. Isn't that how the DOJ recruited into the Honors Program? or from Regent Law School? There is a history here.....
I would think we could all agree it would be somewhat important that they not reach either of those particular conclusions.
Don't be silly. That carries the danger of logical debate rather than petty sniping based on the ideological stance of the whiner in question.
The fact that BHO worships BHO might have something to do with it. I've not met too many self-hating politicians, but this guy's regard for himself is staggering. That pose he likes to strike with his chin in the air is no accident.
Moreover, have you seen or heard clips of this principal speaking? I'm pretty sure she doesn't know Barack from Harvard Law. I think it's pretty lame and similarly creepy that she had kids singing praises of her Messiah, but were I a parent with a student in that school, I'd be more worried about the spelling and math and science instruction my kid was getting under this lady's supervision. She's barely literate.
If my kid went to that school I would be in attendance of the next school board meeting to ask what the heck is going on.
Wow. First of all, this is an especially lame response coming from a First Amendment scholar. You can blog about what you want, but don't expect to not be criticized for your choices, either in the comments or other forums.
Glenn Beck can also say whatever he want on his television program. But Glenn Beck is a nutcase and people are right to criticize him for what he says.
I think you are showing very poor judgment indeed in obsessing over this incident. You have just gone down a notch in my mind, in terms of credibility.
You can blog about what you want. But don't think that what you blog about will not affect your credibility. I think I have noticed a pattern of you becoming less reasonable over time.
Three posts in a row on this topic is a little much, and I think somewhat indicative of you being drawn closer to the fringe. That is too bad.
As to the importance of the issue, as long as it's just this one school it's not very important, but this may well be the tip of the iceberg. Remember the ACORN defense: this was an aberration that happened one time only in one office in one city. Until, of course, it was revealed that it happened repeatedly in other offices in other cities.
To defend Harvard Law just a little (I presume associating the principal with Harvard would be defamatory), it was the author of the Obama themed children's book who said she went to Harvard with BHO, not the principal of the school.
And here is illustrated the power of propaganda. Here we have an anecdote where a minor incident has occurred, and now we have the assumption that this must be occurring in your very own school to.
I wish I could be there when you ask "what the heck is going on" with all these pro-Obama speeches at the next board meeting and you get these puzzled looks because no one knows what you are talking about.
The essence of much propaganda is taking an isolated incident and trying to characterize it as the general case.
Obviously, if your student went to the school where the incident occurred, you would be right to be concerned and inquire about what was going on.
I can see through all your lies and protestations of this not being a big deal. Unless you protest how Obama-songs are bad for children on at least every thread, I'll know all about your secret support.
And if you do post a lot, I'll know you're scared cause we're on to your true agenda.
Not only that, but this fits right into my narrative about Obama being worshiped, so Ima gonna bring it up all the time.
I thank PlugInMonster for his tip, and take it under advisement.
"This minor story is now worthy of three posts? Really?"
mmm mmm mmm
Three whole posts. How about the all those stories the New York Times wrote on the Augusta National Golf Club?
From The American Journalism Review
Wow. So if I run into you at a party, and I'm talking about my hummingbird feeder, and I bring it up two or three times, you think it's OK to say, "that's boring, talk about something else"? You move along and find some conversation that interests you. Telling people that you're not interested in what they're saying is rude, especially, as in this case, when it's their party.
"You, a law professor!" is pretty lame itself.
Back in the dark ages when I was a schoolaged girl, we used to do all sorts of humdrum glorifying of elected leaders. The more humdrum it is, the more acceptable I find it. But to rewrite a religious song this way? Ick, that's very bad taste. However, it does give the lie to the suggestion that the Principal and others at the school are anti-Christian. I'm guessing they used that hymn precisely because they're Christians.
Just goes to show ya, race matters.
You'd be right, assuming you were in school between 1789 and 1797.
You might also compare this incident to the near-canonization of Gingrich, Schafly, et al, that is being pushed in the Texas textbook hearings in anticipation of conservative-only texts that, because of the quirks of the book market, will be adopted nearly nationwide.
Keep sayin' it, eventually it gets true.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2009/09/25/flashback-students-sang-b_n_300372.html
' . . . and that is why I republish this second-hand account of an oral conversation without the apparent expenditure of 10 seconds' effort to attempt to authenticate such a second-hand account from a source whose credibility is a complete mystery . . . '
This is the perfect complement to the swipe at 'real journalists' by another Conspirator in another thread.
There are many ways to be cautions. Including such a disclaimer is one.
I'm an Obama supporter and a liberal, but this is completely unacceptable behavior.
Not necessarily. New religions colonise older religions' forms, for instance the pagan midwinter festival that was taken over as Christmas. Lifting up Jesus and sliding Obama underneath may be neither inadvertent nor benign.
Emulation is high praise indeed. And, in the case, smart. The derivative work was a bestseller for Jesus.
But if it was me, I'd be bending over backwards to avoid any implication of praise or support for Obama as an individual, or for any of his policies.
Rather obviously that did not happen here. The teacher in question and the school principal are both unabashed partisans of Obama and his policies, and they are using their positions to teach children to support Obama and his policies. On top of that, they don't even see that this is improper.
That is scary.
When a key institution of a society becomes partisan, one that is central to knowledge, to thinking and understanding, that society is on its way to totalitarianism. When such partisanship is open and unabashed, things are getting really dangerous.
I don't think she understands that there are limits on her political activity in the school setting.
Nick
Oh yeah because liberal hypocrisy is a non-existent entity?
Personally, neurodoc thinks David Welker deserves a special prize for these comments of his. neurodoc is just trying to figure out the category in which such remarkable comments belong.
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